Cows’ Gift to Humanity

With the increase in food prices due to the Pandemic, grow your own food with organic cow manure fertilizer. You can change poor soil to fertile soil by adding this organic fertilizer and grow vegetables, fruits, flowers, and more in your garden. Take a tour with us of the ISCOWP gardens, where cow dung is the only fertilizer.

The fact that cows give an abundance of cow manure is often forgotten. Most of us equate cows with milk production, which is generally produced only by young female cows. However, old cows, young cows, oxen, and bulls (females and males) all poop. Male and female bovines in all stages of life are freely giving the beneficial, organic cow dung. How to use Cow Manure Part 1 is an introduction to how we at ISCOWP use cow dung, a benefit of cow protection.

About the Cow

“Characterization of Fresh Cattle Wastes Using Proximate, Microbial and Spectroscopic Principles” is an article explaining some reasons for using cow dung. “In recent years, use of manure as fertilizers has been gradually declined due to separation of crop and livestock production, transportation issues and increased availability of synthetic fertilizers [1]. Usage of commercially available synthetic fertilizers pollutes the environment and degraded the soil quality [2]. Due to increasing interest about the harsh effects of synthetic chemicals and improperly treated animal wastes on the environment and human health, researches on alternative farming becomes inevitable [3]… Cow manure has been considered as a potential fertilizer since ancient times as it contains essential macro and micronutrients for crop growth and is a low cost alternative to synthetic inorganic fertilizers.”

What’s in cow manure? A quote from “Current status of cow dung as a bioresurce for sustainable development” informs us. “Being a mixture of feces and urine in the ratio of 3:1, it mainly consists of lignin, cellulose, and hemicelluloses. It also contains 24 different minerals like nitrogen, potassium, along with trace amount of sulfur, iron, magnesium, copper, cobalt, and manganese.”

ISCOWP News

In honor of ISCOWP’s 30th anniversary, we are posting photos from the past. While living at Prabhupada Village, North Carolina, USA, in 1995, William E. Dove (Balabhadra das) trained IFAST members from Gita Nagari Farm, Pennsylvania, USA, to farm with oxen. More history and information can be found in the ISCOWP newsletter archives on our website. Current news, updates about members of the ISCOWP herd, short videos, and photos of ISCOWP activities can be found almost daily on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Please join!

About the Meat and Dairy Industries

The article, “Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint,” states beef also comes from the dairy industry. “The mean emissions from beef very much depend on whether it’s sourced from dairy herds or from dedicated beef herds. Beef from dairy herds tends to have a lower footprint since its footprint is essentially ‘shared’ with dairy co-products. The mean footprint of beef from dairy herds is 17 kgCO₂eq; from dedicated beef herds it’s 50 kgCO₂eq. Around 56% of global beef production comes from dedicated beef herds; and 44% from dairy herds.”